


Ben and Rey Self-Quarantine

by kalx58



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Co-workers, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Floor Sex, Pining, Sexual Tension, Smut, Thirsty Rey (Star Wars), author's coping mechanism, but obviously about our current hellscape so, fairly angst-free, mild michael barbaro slander, tropes and cliche, yoga pants and gray sweatpants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23570266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalx58/pseuds/kalx58
Summary: COVID-19 is serious. This is not.“Sorry. And. Um. Why don’t you just stay with me?”“What?” She gapes at him. Like in your bed? she thinks frantically.“I have a spare room.” (Duh, Rey thinks, cursing her horniness.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 49
Kudos: 583





	1. Chapter 1

“Here’s my card, and please email me if you have any questions at all.”

“Thanks,” the woman says, tucking it away and beaming at Rey. “It sounds like a great place to work." 

“It is,” Rey says, forcing another smile that she hopes looks genuine. She does love her job. But she doesn’t love that they’ve sent her to a women in tech conference with just one other person from the company, and that that one other person is probably the worst man in the world at the chirpy small talk required at these things. She doesn’t know her coworker Ben that well—he works on a different team, on a different floor—but she knows he doesn’t want to be here. He’d protested, loudly, when he’d found out, when they’d both been called into the office of both of their bosses’ boss. “It should be someone else. It’s a women in tech conference,” he'd said, not looking at her. “The optics are bad if I’m there. Also, have you seen the news? Should we even be going to this conference?” 

She looks at him now. He’s standing in the back of their booth, hands in pockets, impassive. He’s not exactly an inviting presence. His looming and frowning is the opposite of Rey’s smile-bigger-damnit conference strategy, drilled into her by years of retail jobs. 

He’s said probably five words to her these past two days. Three of them had been grunts as he’d insisted on being the one to set up their table. (In his defense, another had been “Coffee,” when he’d returned from a 45-minute journey he hadn’t told her he was taking and set a steaming cup in front of her.) She fans out their brochures, fiddles with the lanyard around her neck. One more hour. 

He doesn’t smile vaguely out at people, the way she does, or make inane small talk about the weather. And yet, despite his general angry-scarecrow vibe, several women in tech have sidled up to their booth, ignoring her completely, to ask him dreamy questions about their company’s maternity leave policy or hiring goals for the upcoming quarter. Rey doesn’t blame them. Even though she doesn’t know Ben, she’s definitely noticed him. She’s always thought he was good looking when she’d seen him in the elevator or kitchen. He’s so tall and serious, always seems to be walking somewhere with a purpose. 

* * *

The pack up silently, stacking everything into Ben’s car. When he backs out of the spot, he throws an arm around her headrest to balance, looking behind him. And. It’s weirdly hot, for some reason. Maybe she just has a thing for competence. Or arms. His are nice. They look capable. Like he could spatchock a chicken and then fuck her against a wall. 

She clears her throat. “Would you mind if we stopped somewhere for tea? My throat hurts after talking all day.”

He nods, and neither of them talk. 

* * *

A half hour later, he pulls into a Starbucks. She gets tea, and scrolls through her email while she waits for him to come back from the bathroom. Her eyes widen when she sees the email.

“Holy shit, Ben,” she says, waving him over. “Did you see this? Someone at the conference had coronavirus."

“What?” He’s standing close to her, looking over her shoulder as he pulls out his phone.

“They were there yesterday, and felt sick and had a fever. They were somehow able to get a test last night since they've been to Italy.”

He’s scrolling through his phone. “The city health department is recommending we all self-quarantine. Shit.”

They both look up and around them, at all the people in the Starbucks. “We have to get out of here,” Rey says, feeling herself start to panic, grabbing her bag.

“Wait, don’t use your hand,” she hisses when she sees him reach for the door handle. “Use your shoulder. Or your butt.”

“My butt?” he says, looking back at her. 

“Like, back out of it,” she says, doing a motion with her hips to try and demonstrate what she means. It just ends up making her look like she’s convulsing. “Oh, never mind,” she says, elbowing her way out the door.

They sit it in his car and Rey tries not to panic. “We have to call the Starbucks and tell them. And sanitize everything when we get back to the office. Oh, fuck. Rose.”

“Who?” 

“My roommate. She sees her parents all the time—and shit, she’s going to her grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. Oh God, if I have it and accidentally give it to her, I’d be giving it to all of her family, and all her old relatives. Fuck. Fuck.” 

“Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Rey snaps, as she fumbles for her phone, brain churning through scenarios. “Didn’t you see there was an entire panel on that at the conference? How to deal with men telling you to calm down?”

“Uh. ”

“I think I’m allowed to freak out Ben,” she says, and she realizes her voice is a little high and desperate. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home. But I don’t know where to go. I could go to Finn’s, but he’s public facing—”

“Sorry. And. Um. Why don’t you just stay with me?”

“What?” She gapes at him. Like in your bed? she thinks frantically. 

“I have a spare room.” (Duh, Rey thinks, cursing her horniness.)

“I live alone. It says we need to quarantine for two weeks. That’s not that long. You wouldn’t have to infect anyone.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, it seems like the only solution.”

“Um. You’re probably right. Thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

“Hey, Rose. So, uh, you know the coronavirus?” Rey says into her phone a few minutes later, as they sit in traffic on the Bay Bridge. “Turns out, someone at our conference had it and now they’re saying we all have to quarantine.” 

“What!”

“I don’t want to infect you or your family, so my coworker Ben, who I went to the conference with, actually said I could stay with him—”

“Wait, the one who you said was really—”

“I know, isn’t that so nice?” Rey says loudly. Ben doesn’t need to know she once told Rose that she wants him to just lay on her with his big body. Not necessarily in a sexual way. More like an attractive weighted blanket. “So I’ll be staying at his place for two weeks.” 

“That’s wild. And thank you. So much. But this sucks. I can drop some of your stuff off later if you want?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask. I’ll text you a list and you can just drop it on the porch and run away.”

* * *

When they get to his place, she scrubs her hands for what feels like ten minutes, and looks around. His apartment is big, with lots of dark wood built-ins, and he looks slightly uncomfortable when she compliments it.

“Thanks,” he says, looking past her. “It was my dad’s post-divorce bachelor pad.” 

They set up the futon in his guest room, which seems less like a place for guests and more like storage for his PlayStation and books. Their arms bump while they silently wrestle with the sheets. 

She sits on his couch, he sits at his dining room table, and they each work for a few hours, and then Rey doesn’t really know what to do when the workday ends. They’ve said maybe two words to each other in the last hour. They’re both still in their conference clothes. She thinks gloomily about the next two weeks. Is this what it’s going to be like, a silent, awkward hellscape, albeit a hellscape with startlingly handsome company? She takes out her notebook and starts making a list of things to have Rose bring over: underwear, personal laptop, book, yoga mat, her workout clothes. She’s disappointed about missing her upcoming yoga classes, since she’d been working with her teacher on her inversions, and she’s this close to perfecting her headstand. 

<ok hour three and already going insane> She texts Rose, staring longingly out the window to the street.

<I can drop stuff by in like 1.5 hours> Rose texts back. <what do you need?>

* * *

Rose calls when she’s outside Ben’s door. “Ok,” Rey says to her, looking through the peephole. “Walk to the end of the driveway and stop.” 

She ends the call and opens the door. “Thank you, you’re a lifesaver!” she calls out, waving at Rose in the distance. 

“I’ll miss you!” Rose yells. “But, in total honesty, I’ll also probably enjoy having the apartment to myself for two weeks.”

“Wow,” Rey says, shaking her head. “Thanks.”

“No, but seriously, I told our family group chat and all the Ticos greatly appreciate your sacrifice. My grandparents are worried about you.” 

“Aw. Hopefully I’ll be okay. Tell them happy anniversary. And prepare for me to text you a bunch.”

“I look forward to it. And I can drop off whatever food you need, or if there’s anything you forgot from home. Just let me know.” 

Rey waves goodbye to Rose and pokes through the paper bag Rose has left next to her duffel. Rose has obviously stopped by a drugstore, because she’d packed them a value pack of toilet paper, a bag of Cadbury mini eggs (thank god) and...condoms? 

“What’s in the bag?” she hears a deep voice say behind her. She shoves the condoms down. 

“Toilet paper,” she says, waving the package aloft. “Wasn’t that nice?”

Ben plucks it from her hand and brings it inside without saying anything.

* * *

She can’t wear a bra for two weeks straight, she thinks later that night in her room. She can handle the awkwardness, can handle the isolation, but she refuses to wear a bra all day, every day. Ben knows she has nipples. He’d said to make herself at home. So she puts on a baggy shirt and walks out to the living room. 

They eat a delivery dinner and chat, but there’s still an awkwardness. He doesn't really say much, but seems willing to answer whatever questions she asks. He always turns them back on her. So they each find out where the other went to college, how long they’ve worked at their company, and it’s all pleasant enough and hideously boring. And he doesn’t look at her chest. Which is good, Rey reminds herself. 

After dinner, they sit in his living room. She’s on the couch, and he’s on the armchair adjacent to her. She scrolls through Twitter on her phone, breaking up the barrage of coronavirus news with sneaking glances at his profile, admiring the curve of his jaw, the size of his lower lip. 

“Sorry if this is weird,” she says eventually. “Feel free to do whatever you would if I wasn’t here. I can entertain myself.” 

“I don’t really...do much.” 

She laughs, even though Ben doesn’t act like it’s a joke.

“Do you want to watch something?” he asks after more silence. 

“Sure.”

“You can pick whatever. It’s the input button, then that one and then that top one for Netflix.” 

“Just to warn you,” she says, scrolling through the options. “My taste can be questionable.” 

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“Just you wait. Also, are you able to see from that angle?”

“Oh. You're right.” And then he sits down next to her on the couch, and she notices the cushion shifting with his weight. She picks a John Mulaney special, trying to avoid the siren song of the trashy true crime shows she’d usually pick, and they watch in silence, save for her occasional quiet giggle. When their hands brush on the remote, he shies away and she feels a little wounded. 

* * *

The next morning, Rey is bleary and barely conscious on the couch when Ben looks at her from the kitchen. “I thought you liked coffee,” he says. 

Why is he frowning at her? And how does he know that? “I do? At work, my BAC is usually 40% java.”

“That’s what I thought I remembered from work,” he says, holding up a French press. “I made this amount because I thought we could share.”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you,” she says, walking over. “I was about to get a withdrawal headache, and you would have quickly regretted becoming my temporary roommate.”

She sits back on his couch, sipping the coffee, and looking at his stack of books on the table—hm, should she attempt the book about Chernobyl or the one about Russian Revolution?—while he sits in the armchair, looking at his phone. Every time he puts it down, he does it with a definitiveness, like it’s the last time, but every time, it buzzes again, muffled but still loud against the cushion. 

“Jesus,” he says the fourth time it happens. “Sorry about this.” 

“You’re fine,” she says, perking up a little. A conversational opening! “Someone must be really eager to talk to you.”

“It’s my family group chat. Is your family also freaking out about you being quarantined?”

“Eh,” Rey says, slightly uncomfortable, thinking of the best way to put it. She’s never been great at casually talking about her family situation. “It’s...a nonissue.”

He looks at her for a brief assessing moment but then his phone buzzes again. He looks at it and sighs. “I have to video call them. Sorry, this will probably be annoying.”

A few minutes later, she hears a blast of technologic fuzz and then he’s waving at his laptop screen. “Hey, mom. Like I said, I’m alive.”

She hears a woman say something loudly in response. “Hold on, I think he’s joining the call,” Ben says to her. “Hey uncle Luke, can you hear me? You’re not making any noise.”

There’s another squawk.

“Mom, mute yourself,” he says, frowning down at the screen. “There’s an echo.” 

“So brusque,” the woman says, chiding. 

“Mom, you’re still not muting.” 

They figure it out and Rey’s not intentionally trying to eavesdrop but they’re right there, and it’s charming to watch Ben’s face move from disgruntledness to amusement as they tease him about how long his hair is. 

“And who are you quarantined with again?”

“I told you. My coworker Rey.”

“Show us,” the woman’s voice demands. 

“Mom...”

“It’s fine,” Rey says, and Ben sighs and turns his laptop around so she can see his mother and uncle, their faces slightly fuzzy. 

She waves at them. “Nice to meet you both. Ben was so nice to let me stay here. And I like your glasses.”

“Thank you,” his mom says, adjusting them. “I hope you and Ben have enough food. Ben, have you been cooking? You know those food delivery apps are predatory—did you ever read that Mother Jones article I sent you? And Rey. Your parents must be so worried about you.” Ben’s mom clucks a little, peering at her. “Where do they live?”

“Ah, well—“

“We will be cooking when we get groceries, Mom,” Ben says, interrupting her. “I think tonight I’ll make that lentil soup Dad taught me.”

His mom gasps, and Rey looks at Ben, grateful for the conversational shift. “That was not your father's recipe,” Ben’s mom says, her voice louder, like she’s moved closer to the screen. “He stole that recipe from me, God rest his soul. Our mother used to make that soup and she taught me—right Luke?”

His uncle grunts (maybe that’s where Ben gets it from, Rey thinks) and Rey picks up a book at random, enjoying the sound of them talking over each other as they lovingly bicker for the next half hour.

(“Mom, have you talked to Lando recently? I saw on Facebook that he was planning to go on a cruise? You should really tell him not to go.”

“You’re still on Facebook?” she tsks. “Do you want to be a pawn of Zuckerburg’s eventual presidential run?” 

“I can drop some things off for you,” his uncle announces. 

“Oh, uh. Thanks, Luke, that’s really nice but I think we’re really okay.”

“Luke, does your neighborhood have a mutual aid group? I know you love being completely isolated, but you should reach out to some people, just in case...”) 

* * *

On Sunday morning, Rey wakes up early, takes her temperature with the thermometer Ben’s left in the bathroom—it’s normal, thankfully—and brings her yoga mat into his backyard. It’s a nice, well-maintained yard, which is good, she thinks as she moves through the poses, considering it’s the only greenery she’ll have access to for the next two weeks. As she unfolds into a cobra, she notices a garden bed in the corner of the yard, and a fragrant jasmine bush.

After, she stands in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water. When Ben walks in, yawning, she finds she’s suddenly incable of swallowing because he’s wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and she chokes a little because everything is visible. She can see it, the shape of his dick, as he walks towards her, watches it move against the fabric and she’s suddenly so, so horny. She doesn’t remember being attacked with such a surge of lust since she was a tween having some, uh, formative experiences to the movie Troy. She wonders what it looks like. She wants to get on her knees on the tile of the kitchen. She wants to drag down those sweatpants, with her teeth maybe, and smell him and suck and lick. 

He doesn’t seem to notice her reaction as he walks past. “Thanks for starting the coffee,” he says. Then he does a double take. “Are you ok? Your face is all red.” 

“Just, ah, choked on water,” she says, forcing herself to raise her gaze to his eyes. And she hopes he doesn’t notice how she’s staring at him and she doesn’t think he does, because he’s looking in the direction at her workout shirt. It’s tight and made out of some technical material and her nipples are visible. Is he checking her out? She tries to make eye contact but he turns again and pushes at the faucet hard, and starts scrubbing their dirty dishes from the night before. 

* * *

“I know this quarantine must suck,” Finn calls through the door, later that day. “But you have to promise me. You must promise me you’ll never let go, Rey.”

“I’m...so….cold,” Rey says dramatically, leaning against the door. 

“Promise me you’ll never let go,” he intones theatrically. 

“I promise, Finn. I‘ll never let go,” she says, collapsing into giggles. 

She hears his laughter from the other side of the door. “Okay, peanut. I’m going to leave the groceries on the stoop. Don’t open the door and cough on me, please. And Poe sends his love. From a safe distance.”

“Thanks for getting all my bougie snacks.”

“Anytime,” she hears him say, and then his footsteps fade away. She hears a tapping behind her and sees Ben looking at her from the table.

“How long have you guys been dating?” he says casually, scrolling through something on the computer, still tapping his pen. 

“Oh. We’re not dating. That’s my friend Finn, we grew up together. That whole thing was a stupid joke we have. He’s actually dating Poe Dameron, who works on my floor? That's how I knew about the company…”

She reaches for the doorknob and says casually, without turning around, “What about you? Any significant other waiting for you to get out of quarantine?”

“Nope,” he says, and he’s standing up and walking towards her. “Here, I can help with those.”

* * *

One morning, she’s sitting on the couch, listlessly attempting to work, but she keeps yawning. She’d slept well enough last night, but there’s something about the patch of sun streaming in from the window onto her and making her sleepy, and she hears the birds chirping outside. She curls a little into the corner of the couch, feeling her body relax into sleep. When she jerks awake a few minutes later, she blinks, mouth fuzzy, and realizes Ben is standing over her.

“Do you nap this much at work?” he says, offering her the blanket he’s holding and his lips might be twitching a little. 

* * *

They adjust to each other. She notices a muscle move in his jaw one morning when she reaches for a mug and realizes an hour later that it’s the one he chooses every morning. He showers all the time, and it’s kind of annoying, because he always seems to start his shower right after she begins her workout. (He’s always in there for so long. What is he doing, deep conditioning treatments?) One day, he politely asks if she can mute her Slack notifications. She notices that his head turns toward her every time she opens her tube of lip balm, realizes the plastic pop must be annoying. He paces. A lot. Sometimes he accidentally paces all the way outside, when she’s working out, and he always looks embarrassed, immediately retreating back inside. And then there’s his pen. 

<ugh he’s a tapper> Rey types to Rose one afternoon.

<who?>

<ben. always taptaptaptap with his pen>

<damn>

<that must be annoying when...>

<what you really want...>

<is for him to tap…>

<don’t say it. haven’t i suffered enough?>

* * *

“Hey, Ben? While you were in the shower, someone dropped these off,” Rey says a few days later. “I think it might have been your uncle? Does he have an anti-5G shirt?”

Ben snorts, taking the plate from her. “That’s him.” He unwraps the foil, rolling his eyes at whatever he sees. 

“Ooh, brownies,” Rey says, reaching for one.

“Wait, no,” Ben says, reaching out, stopping her hand. She likes how his fingers feel wrapped around hers. “These are definitely weed brownies. Like, extremely potent weed brownies.”

She pulls her hand away. “I see.” She hesitates for a second. “I’d be down to eat one later? We could watch a stupid movie or something.”

She thinks he might reject her, but he looks at her with surprise. “Sure.”

That night, Rey only eats half a brownie, on Ben’s fervent recommendation, but she still ends up high. Extremely high. Her brain feels cottony and slow, but she’s placid as she lounges on Ben’s couch, looking at the ceiling. 

Ben comes in, sitting in the armchair, putting a glass of water in front of her. “You okay?” he says worriedly.

“Totally,” she says, smiling at him. She feels her smile stretching her face, wonders for a second if she’s smiling too big, but then the thought sails gently away. 

She feels, like she often does when she gets high, a kind of lazy undercurrent of horniness, relaxation mixed with a heightened awareness of her body. She lets herself look at him. She likes the moles on his face, counts them. His lips are so big. His legs look so strong. He looks at her, and she wonders how she would describe his eye color if she was one of those people who names nail polishes. Republican hunting lodge leather? She wants to collapse into him, have him catch her.

He looks at her suspiciously. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” she says, smiling and laughing a little, mouth dry. “I’m just very high. Do you want to watch a movie?”

He nods, and moves to sit next to her on the couch. She adjusts her sprawled figure, but maybe not enough, because her stoned brain just wants to spread out, and he’s there and big, and so the edges of their sweatpants overlap.

He clears his throat. “How stupid do we want to get?”

Rey looks at the TV, blinking and then she knows exactly what she wants. “Fast and the Furious.” 

He looks sideways at her. “Really?” 

“Ok. One, I like the whole found family thing. Two, I like how stupid and consuming they are. It’s impossible to think of anything bad—like, say, whether or not we have coronavirus—when you’re watching them. Also, I like seeing Ludacris as a tech genius.”

They watch the third one, and Rey stares, rapt. Her mouth might actually fall open at certain parts. But then she notices that Ben is wincing at every explosion (and there are a lot.)

“Are you ok?” she asks, pausing the movie. 

“Um. I sometimes get. Paranoid,” he says, and she sees that he’s shrinking back into the couch like he wants it to swallow him up.

She navigates back to the movie options. “Shit, I’m sorry. Um. We could watch something else? This is really good, it’s like a film noir set in a high school, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is all shambly and has to find out who killed his girlfriend. Or there’s this show about teens at this fancy private school in Spain and everyone is super hot—oh all the actors are like 23, don’t worry Rose and I looked it up—and one of them gets murdered…” 

He shifts. “Right. Maybe something...without murder?” He looks wild-eyed and a little scared and he’s gigantic but she wants to throw her arms around him and squeeze him until he feels better, but she can’t do that. She’s sad, briefly. But then she has a flicker of a thought, and then she concentrates on it harder, and realizes it’s a perfect, brilliant idea.

“I know what we should do,” she says, turning her head to him slowly. He still looks nervous. 

She pats his arm. “Let's do some yoga. It’ll relax you. It’ll feel so good, Ben. I promise.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but she stands up and cajoles him a little more, and eventually he gets a towel and spreads it out on the ground next to her mat. She leads them through some arm and leg extensions, and some downward dog to cobras, and she hears him sigh when his back cracks. 

“Okay, now we’re going to do cat cow,” she says bossily. “So arch your back as much as you can with an inhale. And then release, sticking your butt out.” 

“Is this really what cows look like?” he says. He attempts it, but he’s not doing it enough, and she wants to adjust him. But he’s still her coworker and her slow high mind sadly remembers that they’re not even really friends. 

“Doesn’t it feel good? But you’re not going deep enough, hang on. Watch me.” 

So he pauses and looks at her while she demonstrates, and maybe it’s just him being high too, but his eyes feel like they’re dragging so incredibly slowly down her body. She likes it. 

She pushes her butt out in an exaggerated motion. “See? Now I’m the cow. Moo.” 

His gaze turns back to her face and she sees him swallow, his body so close to hers. She could lean over and kiss him right now. And she knows it would be good, so good and she feels soft and happy at the idea and maybe smiles a little at him, and he smiles too, like it’s very silly what they’re doing, but maybe he’s having some fun, even though their situation sucks. 

But then he blinks (and how is she so pathetic that she’s noticing how long and nice his eyelashes are), and turns away from her to stand up, grabbing the towel.“Thanks. I think that helped. I’m going to—there were some dirty dishes I saw in the sink.”


	2. Chapter 2

They settle into a rhythm. Ben leaves exactly half of a French press of coffee for her in the mornings. Rey makes double batches of various curries for their lunches. They switch off cooking dinner. One night, he makes them a steak salad, and she notices the confident way he manages a screaming hot cast iron, how the veins in his arms tense as he lifts it. When she cooks, he offers to do the dishes. She likes looking at his broad back as he washes them. 

They both work out in the mornings. She goes outside and does some yoga, or a HIIT routine, trying not to worry if she looks like an idiot bouncing around and doing burpees alone. She knows he lifts weights because she’d seen him move an adjustable set of dumbells into his room that first night. One morning, on her way to the shower, she’d walked past his door and heard something heavy hitting the floor. She’d paused by his door for too long, listening to the sound of his heavy breathing and grunting. When she finally makes it to the bathroom, she takes off her towel, noticing that her nipples are hard and her whole body is warm. 

Neither of them are the kind of extrovert that needs to fill every minute with conversation, and they do a good job giving each other space (although occasionally Rey feels like she’ll explode if she doesn’t hear a human voice aside from hers and Ben’s). She likes how they can talk now, about how Ben is weirdly soothed by reading pandemic books, how Rey likes hiking but doesn’t get to do it as much as she’d like because she doesn't have a car, and their quarantine goals. He wants to organize his pantry and garden, she wants to work on her headstands. It’s a good enough situation, and they’re both extremely lucky, all things considered. His internet is fast. They can both work remotely. And yet. Despite the apartment’s comfortable size, sometimes it feels tiny. Mainly because Rey’s desire seems to cloud everything. 

It’s not just his body anymore. It’s the way he lets her pick the TV show or movie every night, how his rare smiles ripple outward on his face, the fact that he always gives her a thoughtful answer when she asks how his day was. It’s the way he adds food to a bird feeder every morning, which she sees through the window by the couch, his big body, usually in a black teeshirt, straining upward to hook the feeder onto a branch. 

One night, he’s on his laptop, playing a computer game with plinking music and she watches it idly over his shoulder instead of reading her book. She looks at his fingers curving over the keyboard and wonders how they would feel playing at her entrance, two of them sliding inside her, his thumb rubbing her clit.

“I’m going to head to my room,” Rey announces, shutting the book. 

“At 9 PM?” he says, not turning away from his game. His sheep character moves a box onscreen, gets stuck. 

“I’m not sleeping. There’s just some stuff I want to do. And I think if you push that box to the right, you’d be able to move—” 

“Oh, you’re right. Thanks.”

Rey flops down on the bed. These days, she has legitimate, serious worries that never seem to entirely leave her—she really hopes she doesn't have coronavirus, she’s stressed out about the idea of potentially losing her job, she wants to vomit when she thinks of their healthcare system dealing with a crisis of this scale—but several notches down on her anxiety list, is her current issue. She wants Ben so much, that sometimes, like now, she’s miserable with it. 

She can’t masturbate at his house, on the sheets they’d battled with. She’s pretty sure there’s some sort of houseguest moral code about that. But she rolls her hips against the bed once, and then again, wishing she had more friction. She can feel that she’s wet already, without even touching herself. She shouldn’t do this. He’s in the other room. She grinds against her hand, and thinks about what would happen if she accidentally walked in on him during one of his long showers.

She’d notice that he was touching himself with rough strokes, back to her, water dripping down his ass. She’d make some noise—wait, she hadn’t actually heard a door open in the distance, right?—and he’d turn, shocked to discover her there. But then he'd say her name in a strangled tone, laced with eagerness, and she'd notice that he handn’t moved his hand, and she’d walk over, touch his chest and there wouldn’t be any awkwardness or slipping on the tile as he’d push her against the shower wall and kiss her, and slowly his hand would travel down, and she has two fingers shoved inside her because she knows he’d be big, and her rule against masturbating is stupid, and he’ll never know what she’s doing, and then there’s a knock at the door. 

“Rey?” Ben says, knocking again. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, moves her hand and springs off the bed. 

“What’s up?” she says, opening the door. Her hands are clasped in the pouch of her sweatshirt.

“Did you get something delivered here?” He’s looking at her closely. And she has a brief, irrational worry that he knows, what she’s been doing, like he can sense it, somehow—no, that’s not a real thing, her brain has been poisoned by reading too many werewolf romances as a horny teenager. She’s probably just flushed and guilty looking. 

She takes the package from him, sucks in a breath and pulls herself together. “Yep. It’s a surprise,” she says and gives him a big grin. He looks startled as she brushes past him to wash her face.

* * *

“Oh….boy,” says Ben the following night as she reveals the puzzle she’s bought. 

“I thought this would be a good project for us,” she says, beaming. “Since there’s nothing else we can do.” Except have sex on this couch, and I’m not sure you want that, she thinks. 

He picks up the puzzle. “There are a lot of flowers on here. That all look the same.”

“It’ll be fun,” she says. “Or at least an accomplishment.” 

He looks at her and she’s still smiling, trying to get him to lighten up, and he—finally—smiles back, a little rustily. 

“Ok,” he says, opening the box and dumping the pieces on the coffee table. “Let’s do it.” 

* * *

Ben’s sighs get heavier with every piece he tries and fails to fit together. 

Eventually, Rey giggles. “We don’t have to do this if you don't want to.”

He looks up, surprised. “Oh. No. I’m fine. I didn’t realize I sounded so…”

“Tortured.” 

He smiles briefly. “Yeah. My friend Hux says I have resting asshole demeanor. My ambivalence looks like hatred, I guess.” 

“So, at work when I see you in the elevator and you look like you want to murder us all, you’re really just ambivalent?”

“Is that what it seems like to you?” he says, looking at her from across the table. The daylight is fading through the windows, and he pushes his hair back. He holds her gaze briefly and then looks down again.

“Maybe ambivalence isn’t the right word.” And she thinks he might say something else, but then he connects his first two puzzle pieces, and looks proud. “Thank god,” he mutters. 

* * *

In general, Rey is fine with making the first move. She has before, doesn’t have a problem flirting and getting rejected. But it’s different with him, she thinks a few days later, watching him eat an apple. Her neural pathways must have rewired this past week. Because even the way he’s eating it, like he’s attacking it with his mouth, his lips stretched around it, is somehow appealing to her. 

Sometimes there are times when she thinks maybe, just maybe, he feels...something. When he looks at her a certain way, the way he always seems to give her the better-looking plate of food. But then she remembers how he turned away from her when they were high, the overly-wide berth he gives her when she’s in the kitchen in her workout clothes. She doesn’t want to mess things up in this petri dish that they’re trapped in, where everything is magnified. She doesn’t want to risk it, and have to survive being trapped together with no one to diffuse the cloistered awkwardness afterwards. She doesn’t know if she could bear it. 

* * *

Eventually, Rey starts wearing her yoga pants all day, and soon enough Ben’s jeans are replaced by his gray sweatpants. She trains her gaze to stop drifting automatically to his crotch, at least most of the time. 

She FaceTimes her friends. She does yoga during the day because she’s bored and she can, attempting Bound Side Crow while she’s muted during a meeting. She’s grateful that things aren’t awkward with Ben anymore—except for one time when she remembers in the shower that she’d forgotten her clean clothes in her room. She’d had to walk quickly, in only a towel, past where he was eating spoonfuls of peanut butter in the kitchen doorway. He’d been singing under his breath (“And I apologize if this message gets you down, then I CC'd every girl that I'd see see round town…”) and had turned slightly at her footsteps. But then he’d turned away quickly, not responding to her request, as she passed, to please not eat all of the peanut butter, since she wants it for toast. He’d started doing dishes, which had been weird, because she’d thought she’d done them all yesterday.

Sometimes they both stumble into the kitchen at the same time, and they wait silently until it’s time for him to plunge the French press. One morning, she realizes that he always grabs his mug by the cup, not the handle, even though it must be hot. It’s like he doesn’t want any impediment to pouring the coffee down his throat. Or maybe his hand is just too big. 

She feels like she has to explain her staring. “Nice mug,” she says. 

“Oh,” he says, turning it to look at where it says “A film by Nora Ephron.”

“My mom got it for me,” he says. “We watched a lot of romcoms after she and my dad divorced.” And she likes learning these slivers of him: the smell of his shampoo, his dedication to his garden, how he raps his knuckles on the table when he’s annoyed, like he maybe wants to punch something but has trained himself not to.

* * *

There’s one unseasonably cold night, and his house is drafty. While they wait for the heater to turn on, she puts on a sweatshirt atop another sweatshirt, feeling like a marshmallow, and he tugs a red beanie over his head. 

“I look like the bear on your tea,” he says in the silence of the living room, while they’re both shivering and trying to read. (They do that most nights, now, sitting together and reading in companionable silence.) 

She’s confused for a second, and then realizes he does, in fact, resemble the logo of her favorite tea, with the cozy plump bear dozing in a red nightcap. She drinks a cup of it every night before bed. She didn’t realize he paid that much attention to her rituals.

* * *

Some days, she feels restless with want. At work, she’d known he was attractive. Seeing him occasionally around their office, never more than a handful of times per fiscal quarter, kept her lust at a quiet, manageable level. But living with him has caused it to swell, her desire becoming larger and all-consuming, and she feels the tension filling up the space around them. 

He’s the only person she can touch safely. And vice versa. So they should, right? One day, while bored in a meeting, she thinks about making a deck to present him the idea. She wonders if the quarantine is finally frying her brain, then starts planning out the slides in her head (“Reason 3: I haven’t had sex in eight months, so I will probably be embarrassingly into whatever you do.”) 

She wants to hold his hand, she wants to crawl to him, she wants to sit on his face. But instead, she just sends more gifs to her coworkers over Slack and watches the squirrels in his front yard chase each other around. 

* * *

A friend of his drops off groceries for them, along with some homemade soup, which Ben divvies up for them later that night. 

“Ok,” he says, looking down at his phone. “Hux said I need to read all these texts before we eat. The broth is apparently made from organic pork bones simmered for 24 hours. The egg is a six-minute soft boiled egg, sourced from the farmer’s market—he used the word jammy here, which seems like some artistic liberty to me—and the vegetables are, of course, also from the farmer’s market.” 

He pauses, sighing as he scrolls down his phone, reciting the rest in a rushed monotone. “The ramen noodles are from Yuen Hop, a market in Oakland’s Chinatown that has existed since 1931 and sells a variety of hand-pulled noodles for all kinds of Asian dishes, although they obviously specialize in Chinese noodles…” and as he continues to scroll, he rolls his eyes at her, and she laughs, liking the companionship they’ve settled into, if she can’t have anything else.

* * *

Rey loses it a week in. She doesn’t know if it’s the bad sleep she’d gotten (she’d found some book called Motorman in her room and had stayed up too late reading it, resulting in strange, upsetting dreams) or the podcast she’d listened to while working out, where someone had explained in their calm NPR voice just how ill-prepared the country is for a pandemic, or how much she misses Rose and Finn. 

One minute she’s working, Slacking her coworker Nandita about a bug, and then the next she’s sobbing. She takes her headphones off and tries to do it quietly, but she hears Ben’s chair scoot on the hardwood floor and then he’s moving across the room to sit next to her on the couch. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, but she just seems to cry harder. “Everything is just so upsetting. We had so much time to figure this shit out, and everyone is so fucking inept, and now people are being so racist and I hate it. I hate him, I hate everything. And Italy—and that article yesterday—and what if we’re asymptomatic carriers and don’t know it and accidentally infected some old person at that Starbucks. I just feel so useless. And. And. I just want to go outside. And I want to go grocery shopping,” she says, more tears falling down her cheeks. 

He pats her awkwardly, like he doesn’t know how much he's allowed to touch her and she leans into his touch. She’ll take whatever comfort he can give her right now, not just because she wants him, but because right now, she needs another human telling her, even if it’s mostly a lie, that things will be alright. 

He doesn't do that. “Everything really sucks right now,” he says somberly. And he says it in such a serious tone, and it’s true, terribly so, but some shattered, hysterical part of her brain finds his blunt honesty funny, and she sniffs, laughing a little.

He keeps patting her, not saying anything. There’s the sound of tinny Taylor Swift playing from her headphones. She wants him to pull her into his lap and have him fold his arms around her, but this is nice, too. 

Eventually, he says, “We can watch one of the Fast and the Furious movies tonight if you want?”

She looks up, sniffs. “Really?” she says. “You’d be ok with that?” And she must look tear-stained and tragic but he smiles at her, his expression tender. 

“I think I can handle it if I don’t eat one of those brownies.” 

“We can watch the last one,” she says, wiping at her face. “They go to Havana and Charlize Theron is in it. I think you’ll really like it.”

“I don't think I will,” he says gently. “But that’s ok.”

* * *

She wakes up thirsty in the middle of the night, and when she pads into the dark kitchen for water, she bumps into a broad wall of warm bare skin that she takes too long to back away from.

“Gah. Sorry,” she says to Ben, yawning and making eye contact with his nipples. She wonders if they’re sensitive.

He reaches past her to turn on the stove light while she fills up her glass. She’s not sure if it’s her tiredness or the sight of his bare chest that makes her spill a little on the floor. When she bends over to mop it up, she hears a noise behind her. 

“I hope that wasn’t a dry cough,” she says, right as he says, “Do your shorts say—”

She forgets that he’s never seen her actual pajamas. When they’re hanging out at night, she usually wears her sweatpants and a hoodie, but she runs hot, and clothes she actually sleeps in are a holey tank top and pair of tiny shorts that say Juicy across the ass. (Rose had found two pairs at a thrift store and brought both home for them, delighting in their early-aughts tackiness.) 

“Oh,” she says, standing and turning to put her glass down on the counter. Everything feels slightly unreal in the dim light of his kitchen. “Um. They were a gift.” 

* * *

Ben storms out of his room one morning, yanking the earbuds out of his ears. “I can’t listen to him anymore.”

“I know. His voice is so breathy and disgusting.” 

“Oh, well, him too. But I meant Michael Barbaro. His fucking mmm-hmmms...” 

When he walks past her, she smells his sweat, and everything in her tenses. 

“Did you see that New York Times piece about the new numbers?” she says to distract herself. 

“Yeah. Did you listen to that Fresh Air interview yesterday about Washington?”

“Did you see the Guardian thing about how Boris Johnson’s favorite character in Jaws is the mayor?” 

He shakes his head and yanks open the fridge door, and she looks at his arms in his tank top. He pulls out the cold brew concentrate Finn had brought them and stares at it. “Do you mind if I drink some of this?” he asks, and it takes her too long to respond. 

* * *

Two days before their quarantine is up, he finally cleans his pantry, grumbling to himself as he pulls down multiple half-finished bags of flour. That night, when they’re eating dinner, he pulls out a bottle of wine, setting it in front of her with a thunk. “I found this earlier. We could drink it. If you want.” 

They pour glasses, and sit at the puzzle. They’re in the final stages, where they both need to be working in the same area, a giant expanse of green grass (she doesn’t know why she picked this infuriating puzzle) and occasionally his elbow will bump hers, or their knees will knock together when she leans for a particular piece. As they work, he keeps asking if she wants a refill, the bottle poised above her glass, and she keeps saying yes, feels herself get a plesant wine buzz.

When she presses the last piece of the puzzle into place (he’d insisted she be the one to do the honors), she turns, grabbing his arm and shaking it with excitement. And then she lets him go, and they both sit back on the couch, and he’s looking at her, his eyes flicking around her eyes and mouth and he smiles, and she smiles back and he leans toward her slightly, and she mirrors the movement. 

“Your mouth,” he says hoarsely, gesturing and taking a sip. His movements are looser, less controlled than his usual rigid posture. 

“Yeah?” she says, a little breathless. 

He’s staring at it. She can hear his breaths. Does he want to kiss her? 

“Your teeth are very purple right now,” he says, squinting as he looks at them. “I think they’re more purple than white.” His eyes widen after he says it, like he maybe didn’t mean to say that. 

Deflated, she sits back. Friendly ribbing from a platonic male friend. She thought that maybe, Ben, had felt something. But no, it’s just the same old story of her life. 

“Thanks,” she says. “Well, you look like you’re wearing some organic lipstick made from beets that would be advertised to me on Instagram.” And then he rubs at his mouth, and there’s no reason why she should be looking at him anymore. 

* * *

He stays in his room for most of the next morning, finally emerging in the afternoon. He doesn’t look at her when he walks through the kitchen. 

“Almost release day,” he says. “I guess we both got lucky. You still don’t have any symptoms, right?”

She makes some noise in response, and he plunks on his giant straw hat. “I’m going to garden for a while.” 

She doesn’t say anything, just nods. She’s spent so much time lusting over him these two weeks. Maybe she’d gotten confused. Started to see things that weren’t there. But tomorrow she’ll go home. She just needs to survive one more night of this festering horniness. She sighs, starts her podcast queue and unrolls her yoga mat in the living room. She is going to do a handstand if it kills her. (But not really, since she doesn’t want her teacher to be disappointed in her bad form.) 

Around a half hour later, she’s in a headstand in the middle of Parivrttaikapada Sirsasana when she hears the door open, and Ben’s footsteps. 

“Hey, Rey—oh you’re busy,” Ben says, and then she hears him walk back into the kitchen. “Never mind.”

Part of her wonders for a second what he wants, but she’s upside down and busy. She extends one leg, then the other, and she’s doing it for a while, chanting yesyesyes in her head as she tries not to hold her breath. But then her legs start to shake and her core gives out. She collapses with a thunk, landing on her elbow and side. 

“Fuck,” she says into the mat. 

She hears something drop in the kitchen and then Ben’s rushing toward her. He kneels next to her. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her side. “I had it for a second.”

He cages his arms around her, bending over her. “I saw. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” He peers over her, scanning her face. 

She rolls onto her back, looking up at him and his dark eyes. She won’t let them fool her again. He’s probably just trying to make sure she’s not concussed. For liability reasons, or something. “Yeah. Thanks.” 

He moves his arms, and starts to stand, but then he looks back down at her, almost like he’s considering something. Her podcast has ended and the room is still and quiet in the afternoon light. And then he turns and he’s crouching over her again, only this time, he cups her face in his hands and oh, he’s kissing her. She inhales his smell, feels the scratch of his stubble. She feels a zip of desire spread through her body, and uses the last of her core strength to sit up and kiss him back. He makes a little oomphing noise of surprise at her enthusiasm. 

She pulls away. “Wait, what? I thought you didn’t—”

“Huh? I didn’t think you—” he says, his lips reddened from their kissing.

“I was. So obvious. I thought?” 

“Um. I guess I didn’t pick up on it?” And then he’s pressing forward to kiss her again and she puts her arms around him and lets herself sink into how good it all feels—his hand sliding up her back. His closeness. His tight grip, like he doesn’t want to let her go. And all those times she’d thought he was aloof, maybe he was just trying to stay in control, and now it’s slipping, his hands big and searching, his inhales sharp and desperate, the way he keeps breaking their kiss to look at her face. 

Somehow she ends up down on the mat again, her shirt pushed up and he’s pressed against her, kissing her neck, his hands poised above her like he’s not sure she wants them. She grabs his hand in hers and pulls it to her breast, and he squeezes, both their movements jerky. She knows she’s sweaty and he smells a little like dirt, and Rey thinks nothing could be better than how this feels. She puts her arms around him, feeling the coiled energy of his body, his back and butt muscles. His mouth descends on her breast, tonguing her nipple. Fuck. She fists a hand on his shirt to pull him closer, and he sucks harder, more of her breast disappearing into his mouth. 

“From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is ‘The Daily.’”

Rey turns her head, confused, and realizes that her phone has cycled to the next podcast. Ben leans forward to fumble with her phone and turn it off, and the motion makes his dick, hard and long in his sweatpants, drag against her cunt. 

She sighs, and he looks down at her, eyes wild. She grabs at his hips, trying to chase the sensation. He bends, holding her hips in place as he thrusts hard between her thighs, and she squirms a little, so he ends up bumping against her clit. 

He reaches for her waistband. “These fucking pants,” he says, tugging at them, voice pained. “I wanted—for so long.”

“Jesus, yours—these are obscene,” she says with a gasp, grabbing at his sweatpants, their hands colliding. “I could see. Everything.” 

He shoves her pants down first, pushes her hips down gently and kneels between them. He has a hand on each hip as he bends down, spreading her open as he kisses her thighs. It’s nice, but it’s not what she needs—and when he finally licks her, one long stroke, she nearly yells at how good it feels. He pauses, face against her cunt, and she feels his intake of breath. Rey twitches.

He slings her legs over his shoulders and hauls her hips closer to his mouth as he licks around her folds, groaning at how wet she is. He’s licking her so hungrily, like he could do this forever. She feels the pressure building. And then he looks up at her with those dark eyes and he flicks against her clit with little thrusts of his tongue and then she’s starting to come, pressed against his mouth, legs spasming. 

Rey lets out a shaky breath as he moves up her body to kiss her forehead. She turns, kissing him messily on the mouth and reaches into his sweatpants to squeeze him. He jerks a little.

“Let’s have sex,” she says bluntly. She has no use for subtlety right now. She jerks him for a few strokes, rubbing her thumb over a dot of precum. “I want you.” 

He nods blindly, thrusting into her grip. Then he blinks and seems to realize where they are, that he’s pressing her into the hardwood floor, with only her yoga mat as support. 

“We probably shouldn’t do this here,” he says, rutting against her grip.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Rey says half-deliriously, already trying to pull him closer. She needs to feel him pushing inside of her, needs to find out how he sounds when he comes. She realizes that she’s begging him to fuck her on the floor, and maybe that’s pathetic, but this is what he’s reduced her too, and the way he’s looking at her now makes her think that he understands how she’s feeling. 

“I have wanted to do this for—I’m not going to fuck you on the floor.” He thrusts against her once more, and then pulls away, exhaling like it’s difficult. He stands, pulling her up with him. She trips over her yanked-down pants, and then takes her pants and shirt off completely, leaving them in a pile on her mat. 

He gapes at her naked body, and starts to pull them to his room. At the doorway, he stops short. “Fuck. Fuck! I don’t have a condom.” His voice sounds like it’s about to break.

“Oh,” Rey says. “I do.” She dashes to her room, grabs the box and walks back into his room. He’s naked, propped against the pillows, and he’s pulling at himself roughly. She watches for a second, enthralled, listening to his gasps and the sound of slapping skin, and then moves next to him. 

She kisses him as he puts on the condom, then climbs onto his lap, feeling a flutter of excitement as she looks at his big body beneath her, hard and desperate. She drags her wetness against him once, twice, and he’s making pained noises now, so she takes pity and grasps him, sinking down onto him. He’s—enormous. She takes a deep breath, getting used to his size, and she rubs at her clit, moving slowly. His breath is leaving him in frantic pants. She can tell he’s not trying to move too much, is letting her control it. She circles her hips, sighing as she rubs harder, and she’s used to him now, loves how completely he’s filling her. “Fuck, Ben.”

And then something seems to snap in him, because he thrusts up like he can’t control it. “Oh,” Rey says, startled, as she bounces a little on his lap, and he swears and leans forward to suck at her breasts, moving mindlessly between them as he thrusts. The intensity of his eyes as he looks at her, his teeth scraping her nippples—she feels herself get wetter, jams her fingers against her clit, and then she comes again, face buried in his neck and gasping as he fucks up into her.

He takes a shuddering breath. “You feel—” and then he’s pushing them backwards, so she’s on her back on the bed. He slams into her with rhythmless thrusts, as he moves an arm under her back to cradle her, kissing blindly at her face and neck and mouth. And she loves it, loves how the stillness and frustration of the two weeks has dissolved into breathless noises and clutching grasps. He thrusts forward once more, clinging to her shoulders tightly as he comes

“Oh, Rey,” he says, sighing into her neck. 

* * *

Rey spends the night in his bed. When they wake up, Ben pulls her close and they have lazy morning sex, his large body wrapped around hers as he thrusts slowly, his hand moving over her clit, the sun rising sharp through his curtains. Afterwards, he brings her coffee in bed. 

They talk about nothing, but they keep smiling at each other, and he keeps pulling him toward her to kiss her forehead or neck. He lets her play with his hair and run her fingers along his chest. When Rey packs up her room, stripping the sheets into a neat pile, she thinks, on the whole, quarantine hadn’t been that bad. 

He insists on driving her back to her place, even though Rose had offered to pick her up. They sit in comfortable silence as he drives, the local NPR station playing quietly in the background. Rey looks out the window at everything they’re passing, eager to be outside and go to the park, the coffee shop by her house, even their office. 

When Ben pulls up in front of her apartment, he turns off the car. He rubs the back of his neck. “So, I was wondering. Why did you have condoms last night?”

Rey looks out the window, at her front door, avoiding his eyes.“I...my roommate put those in the bag she dropped off. As sort of a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Because...I had maybe told her in the past about how attractive I find you.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding pleased. 

“I, uh, definitely thought it was just me and did not expect this to happen,” she says. 

He looks slightly abashed. “It wasn’t just you. But every time I thought about it, I talked myself out of it because I didn’t think you—or I thought maybe it was just the situation…”

“No, Ben,” she says, amused. “It wasn’t just the quarantine.” 

He kisses her back, carefully moving the hair of hers that falls into his face. They sit in silence, smiling dopily at each other. But then Rey hears something on the radio, and she turns toward it, confused. Ben reaches for the volume knob. 

“Breaking news about the local response to the novel coronavirus. The leaders of six Bay Area counties have decided to enact a shelter in place, beginning tonight at midnight,” the anchor says. “Starting tomorrow, residents in San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties are instructed not to leave their house, except for essential trips for work, groceries, medicine and exercise. If people can work from home, they are strongly encouraged to do so. This is the first such measure taken in the United States to curb…”

They both stare in horror at the radio. 

“Fuck,” he spits out. 

“Oh no—” she says.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to go on a hike next weekend,” he says miserably. 

She can’t help but laugh, leans forward to kiss him again. “This sucks so bad,” she says against his mouth. She rests against his chest, ignoring how the center console digs into her hip. 

“I hate it,” he says back. 

“How’s your sexting?” she asks, looking up at him.

“Terrible, probably,” he says. But then he’s kissing her so thoroughly that, for a little while, she forgets about everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope wherever you are, you're safe and healthy! Sending love and support to everyone who has to be working out in the world right now ❤️
> 
> Somewhat related: here's a great [steak salad recipe](https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/steak-salad-with-harissa-potatoes-and-crunchy-radishes) and a [very nice essay](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/09/arts/nora-ephron-rom-com-dialogue.html) about Nora Ephron's talent for writing rom-com dialogue, featuring Carrie Fisher iconic, Rolodex-heavy role in When Harry Met Sally.
> 
> [ Occasional tweets here](https://twitter.com/kalx58)


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